23 February 2009

Workers absconded with lorry and equipment

Hi

We are looking for the following men who on a contract from Subsurface Engineering SB have disappeared with company lorry and other equipment. They last contacted the office about 2 weeks ago:



Mohd Hasnur Hisham Bin Mat Dagang
IC: 790122-06-5507









Mohd Safaruddin Bin Mat Dagang
801113-06-5119






Ng Chak Ngoon
Subsurface Engineering SB
Hi

After the MSIA-IEM Seminar, the JKR slope section under Dr. Aziz formed a committee to evaluate the performance of top-drive and spindle-drive machines and also how the quality of SI (boring) is affected by the wash-boring as compared to the method advocated by Mr. AW Shaik.
MSIA was represented in the committee by PK Choong, Safaruddin, and Ng CN. After one committee meeting, we were sent via email from Mr. Devagaran Samugavelu of JKR the description of the six test holes would be drill. It was clear that the testing was not properly thought out. Here was my response to this email. It was not responded to and the trials went ahead as planned. Till now, we have not received any report from JKR on this matter which I assume is a failure because of the absence of any logical basis for the trials to be carried out:


Dear Mr. Devagaran Samugavelu

To the best of my understanding of what has been written, my comments are asfollows:

The two documents together, especially that titled "Drilling With TopDrive" seem to be an attempt to compare three different methods of drilling:

  • Using the top drive machine
  • Using the water jetting method
  • Using the rotary method.

The confusion between methods and machines is clear. Is it not possible to use both a top drive machine (tcm) and spindle drive machines (sdm) for bothwater jetting AND the rotary method? It will be too long to go into the comparison of different types of drilling machines here but unfortunately this is basis of this whole exercise which is to verify two separate claims proffered without any justification orsupporting evidence:

  • The use of tcm is superior to sdm for site investigation.
  • The use of water jetting (or washboring) disturbs the soil and therefore, rotary boring is the method that should be used.

The obvious danger here is that we seem to be going into this exercisewithout being clear on the issues which we are trying to resolve. The comparison of drilling machines and drilling methods would be better if we tabulate the essential features of drilling machines and drilling methods. I have tried to do exactly that by rearranging the document"Drilling With Top Drive" into a table. Unfortunately, I find that the defining or essential characteristics of one(machine / method) are not accompanied by the equivalent of the other. Furthermore, when I did this, it also became clear that not only machine is compared against machine but method as well, the flaw in logic which I attempt to highlight in the earlier point.

Ng Chak Ngoon